The role of telomerase in the healthy and diseased heart

Telomerase is a ribonucleoprotein (RNP) with a reverse transcriptase activity that re-elongate telomeres and thus increases the cells lifespan. In addition, by its non-canonical functions it protects cells from various damages.

Previous studies demonstrated that telomerase is essential for cardiovascular development by regulating tissue repair and regeneration and, it is associated with cardiovascular diseases and cardiovascular mortality.

Therefore, the aim of our research is to further investigate the role of telomerase in the healthy and diseased hearts and to examine the cardioprotective effect of telomerase increasing compounds.

In this study, we investigated the effect of TERT knockout (KO) and TERT activation by telomerase activating compounds- AGS, developed in our laboratory, on the heart function and on the expression of genes related to regulation of blood pressure, myocardiocytes normal function, proliferation, and DNA repair in hearts from wild type and TERT knockout mice.

We found that TERT deficiency affects the expression of the different gene groups and the effect of TERT KO on these genes differed between males and females. In addition, increasing TERT expression by AGS compounds affects the expression of the various examined genes in the WT heart but not in the KO counterpart. Also, echocardiogram analysis revealed that AGS compounds restores the normal heart function in WT mice following treatment with damaging agent.

These data suggest the importance of TERT in the maintenance of normal heart functions by influencing the expression of essential genes.